[Mb-civic] Are museums safe from terrorism? - Michael O'Hare - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Are museums safe from terrorism?

By Michael O'Hare  |  August 27, 2005

THE MUSEUM of Fine Arts is planning a $100 million expansion. Exciting, 
but all in all, maybe not such a good idea to further concentrate 
cultural treasures in one place.

Disagreeable as it is, let's try to think like a terrorist, especially 
an Islamic terrorist, flying over Boston in a stolen corporate jet with 
a load of fuel, who wants to deliver it where it will create the most 
damage to the evil society below it.

Various skyscrapers are in view, in any of which you could kill a lot of 
people, probably hundreds, but you have to kill thousands to be in the 
big leagues now . . . say, what's that building in the Fenway? It's full 
of images, intrinsically forbidden, and a lot of those images are 
Christian, Jewish, Hindu, animist . . . a warehouse of infidel impiety. 
Not to mention unspeakable obscenity: nudity, sex, the lot.

Furthermore, these objects are unique. The library has the only copies 
of some books, but the information in most of them exists elsewhere; 
it's very hard to kill a book. The art in a museum, in contrast, is 
irreplaceable and embodies the whole cultural history and tradition of 
the society you want to do your worst to: incinerate an ''Ascension" and 
it's completely gone, forever. Oh yes; on a weekend day with a 
blockbuster exhibition underway, the museum will have a non-trivial 
number of visitors in it as well, which moves it up the target list from 
a church.

Unimaginable that anyone could be so savage as to blow up a museum? Ask 
the people at the Uffizi, and ask the Taliban who shelled the Buddhas, 
never mind the assaults on children, bystanders, and anyone else that 
have by now become banal. Islamic terrorists, organized and systematic 
or diffuse and unguided, have shown themselves to deserve our worst 
expectations. And don't for a minute believe that the Islamic 
collections in museums that have them, like the MFA, are effective 
hostages against attack: Terrorists will destroy anything and kill 
anyone, on the basis of a theology or ideology unlike anything we've 
ever seen. The utilitarianism of terror operates, on the evidence of 
public statements and behavior, are at a level that will accept any cost 
to pursue an enormous nihilistic goal.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/27/are_museums_safe_from_terrorism/
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